To get to Amrum, I can recommend this:

* take a train to Hamburg unless you're already there :-)
You need to get to the town of "Dagebüll". Make sure to go to "Dagebüll Mole" which means to the harbor.
There is a direct connection available from Hamburg/Altona to Dagebüll, so you won't run into difficulties. When I went there the first time, I had to take a slower train and make one connection.
To get from Hamburg to Dagebüll takes almost 4 hours, although the distance is rather short (160 km/ 100 miles). The reason is that the train stops frequently. You can buy the ticket for the train when you are ready to go - in Hamburg on the railway station - reservations are not required.

* in Dagebüll you'll get off the train and walk about 150 meters (150 yards) to the ships. Take a ship to "Wittdün/ Amrum". You can buy the ticket for the ship right there - a reservation is not required and you'll get a seat for sure.
Amrum is a little more away from the shore than most of the other islands; the ship took approximately 1.5 hours, I think.

* once you have arrived in Amrum, you will want to find your place to stay. We stayed on a campground on the West side of Amrum. Amrum is famous for its beach. Where we camped, the beach was in fact 2 miles (3 kilometers) broad. Quite a walk until you get to the water :-) I never made it. This campground was rather at the Southern end of the West side.
There are other campgrounds all over the island and you'll meet people there who stay there longterm (like 6 months - the whole summer).

If you do not like to do camping, I recommend staying in "Nebel" (in the center of the island) or "Norddorf". Norddorf = German for Northern Village is located at the Northeastern end. You also won't have the 3km broad beach there :-) - just in case you plan some serious swimming.
See the overview map at http://www.amrum.net/plan/amrum.gif to get an idea about the villages there.

The other two villages on Amrum are "Wittdün" (where your ship arrived) and "Süddorf". There's nothing wrong with these two, I just liked the village Nebel a little better (the word "Nebel" means "fog"). Nebel has those really old pubs with names that remind to pirate stories. I had some good rum there :-)

Amrum is rather small - about 1 or 2 miles from West to East and 3 miles from North to South. We hiked and used rental bikes there (you get them everywhere, for example on the campgrounds, about US$ 10 a day I guess).

Now one thing that hopefully does not scare anybody away.
The people in this landscape are not exactly outgoing and do not appear warmhearted. They appear rather rough and quiet. We realized that we were seen as "tourists" all the time although we were native Germans, had lived in Germany all our lifes etc.
Therefore I highly recommend to learn some German words or travel with someone who knows German. I may be wrong, but I just cannot imagine anybody up there willing to speak English.

I could write more about the nature reservation there; I think Amrum is a gigantic bird sanctuary.

Oh, one other thing you should better watch out for.
Don't go there too late in the year. May - September is perfect.
I think we were there in late October and caught some heavy rain at night.

I found a good website about Amrum at
http://www.amrum.net/

They have a large overview map (the whole island) at
http://www.amrum.net/plan/amrum.gif

A nice clickable imagemap that will display you maps of the towns is here:
http://www.amrum.net/plan/amr_wahl.htm




Recommended: Yes